As Red as Blood
by Anidori-Kiladra
Summary: She knows the mating habits of griffins and the properties of unicorn horns. She knows when dragons prefer to hunt and why fairies sometimes eat their young. She knows that those who are vampire-bit will soon become vampires themselves.
1. Part One

As Red as Blood

Part One

They tell a story of Snow White. They say that she was born with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. This is a different story, though no less true for that. She was not born with lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow and hair as black as ebony. True, her hair was dark, though it was more the color of the teak wood dining chairs that came as part of her mother's dowry. And her skin was fair, though not the pure white of snow. And as for her lips, those did not turn red until much later.

* * *

Born on a cold winter morning, her mother clutches her to her breast and calls her Snow White, in the hope that she will be as pure and white as the new-fallen snow. And with a doting mother and a loving yet oblivious father, it proves true.

The court physician worries about the child because she never cries, but looks up at her with eyes of wonder, eyes so dark a brown that they bring to mind the chocolate that has lately come from Spain. The physician shudders with something akin to revulsion as she leaves the baby's nursery and doesn't know why, for surely there is nothing revolting about this, the perfect child.

* * *

At the age of five, when her mother dies, Snow White does not cry. She knows she should, but she cannot summon the tears to her eyes. Her father wraps his arms around her and soaks the shoulders of her dress with his tears, but she only looks solemnly over his shoulder.

* * *

The physician, invited to the funeral as all the household staff is, sees this solemn look, and glances away quickly, not wanting to catch her gaze.

Soon after the death of the queen, the king falls ill. The doctor comes to treat him, and there is no physical wrong in him that she can see: indeed, he is still young, not much past thirty, and, the doctor cannot help noticing, still as handsome as he ever was.

But he will not eat. He has sunk into a despair so deep that it is all she can do to force broth down his throat. She comes every day, and as he drinks his barley broth or she feels his forehead for a fever, he looks at her as if she is the only thing holding him up, keeping him alive.

And so it is on the day he clutches at her arm as she turns to go and says "doctor," she sits on the edge of the bed and tells him to call her by her given name; for all that no one has used it in nigh on a dozen years.

He says it as if it is a flavor he is savoring, and still he holds her by her wrist as though she might float away on a passing breeze if he does not. No one has ever looked at her like that, she thinks, and so the next time she comes she does not tie her hair up in a ribbon but lets it fall free. She has been called beautiful in her youth, a youth not much past.

She does not think of what she is doing, trying to attract a king, and mere weeks after his wife's death. She is careful not to think about it. And when the day comes that he sits up in bed and kisses her, she pushes all thoughts of mourning and fidelity from her mind and leans in and kisses back, just to feel his warm arms come around her and to be safe again, for the first time since childhood to have no worries or cares. This is what she has. This is who she is.

* * *

Snow White is six years old when her father marries his physician and tells her "She is your mother now. You will call her Mother."

But this woman has blond hair, not brown, and looks at Snow White with lips that are pinched, not smiling. No, she can never be Mother.

* * *

For her part, the once doctor watches Snow White watching her and thinks "there is something wrong with that child." But she cannot think for long, because there is a line of well wishers waiting to give her gifts and congratulations, as their new queen, and she does not know what to do with her hands, or her mouth.

She settles for a half smile and clasping her hands over her stomach, then quickly lowers her hands as she thinks it too conspicuous and that surely someone will realize that there is another human being growing inside her.

But still she jumps out of her skin when the last person in line, a wrinkled old woman who barely reaches the now queen's shoulder, puts her gnarled hand upon her stomach and says "ah," before handing her a gilt-framed mirror swathed in lace. The queen wants to recoil, but her husband is smiling and reaching out to the woman to embrace her, explaining in quiet tones that this is his godmother.

She forces a smile to her lips and kisses the woman's weathered cheek, and her present is the first the queen looks at that night after they have all been moved into her antechamber.

It truly is a beautiful mirror, she realizes, once she removes the lace that binds it. She hangs it on the wall above her dressing table and thinks nothing amiss until the day it whispers as she leans in to powder her face: "You really are, you know."

She lets out a strangled screech and jumps back, upsetting her chair. Then she cautiously leans in again.

"I am what?" she asks shakily, barely above a breath.

"The fairest of them all."

She knows she is not the fairest of them all, cannot be, shouldn't be. She must wear glasses to read fine print, her hair is not the blond of cornsilk bathed in summer sunshine but of dusty wheat, and her hands are almost as large as those of the king. But the mirror insists, and she knows that a mirror like this does not lie.

* * *

Snow White sees the new worry in her stepmother's face, a worry that swells along with her belly. Snow White is too young to know about the ways of men and women, and yet she knows. And the stepmother sees Snow White look at her growing stomach and turns away, always turns away with a strange look on her face. Her own mother loved her, Snow White knows, yet this new mother does not, and will only love the creature that comes out of her.

* * *

But the creature does not come. Eight months after the wedding, the queen goes to bed and the midwife, the new physician who has replaced her, comes to her and gives her teas steeped with mugwart, and cool lavender drenched cloths to place on her forehead. And yet for all of this, the baby is born still.

"Perhaps it was not meant to be," her husband whispers as he brushes her damp hair off her forehead and kisses her. "Perhaps it was never meant to be."

He does not console her. The only thing that does is the mirror, later, alone in her room, saying "You are still the fairest of them all."

* * *

Snow White grows up obstinate. The knowledge that her stepmother does not love her taints any obedience Snow White might have had. When she is ten years old, she stops speaking to the stepmother altogether. Soon, she will not even submit to the embraces of her father, and, as she grows older, her obstinance turns to rebellion.

A princess is not supposed to climb out of her bedroom window and down the trellis in the middle of the night to wander through the woods. But she finds solace in the darkness, solace she cannot find anywhere else. In the dark, no one can see her. She can be anyone she wishes to be; anyone but herself.

A princess is not supposed to talk to boys she meets in the woods either. Boys with eyes that glow like firelight. For the fire, as she knows from observation, consumes all it touches. And yet, perhaps she would like to be consumed by this boy with eyes that follow her, this boy that seems to know her. Maybe if she lets him consume her, she will at last begin to feel. To feel as she has not since the death of her mother, eight long years ago. To feel that which the stepmother does not give her, can never give her. To feel that she is worthy of being loved.

And so when she is fourteen she lifts her skirts to him there on the forest floor. Her heart beats hard in her throat as his kisses her cheek and then her neck. This is the moment, she thinks, the moment I finally become. But what she thinks to become she does not know. His lips against her neck turn to teeth, and she feels a sharp pain that makes her clap her hand to her throat. She can feel her pulse beneath her fingers, and when she brings them away, her blood shines milky silver in the light of the gibbous moon. And he smiles at her, blood dripping off the teeth she suddenly sees are sharp. She scrambles to her feet, ripping her dress on a protruding root and runs, never looking back for fear that she will trip and then that hot, looming presence will be on her again.

She hides under her blankets that night and makes sure her windows and her door are latched. She never sees the boy again, but that does not change anything, for she knows what he was.

In the morning, she finds the blood, dried on her neck, and when she wipes it off, finds beneath two puncture holes that gape at her sinisterly, until she thinks to hide them under silk scarf from Paris. A present from the stepmother which she has spurned. It fills its purpose now.

With her wounds hidden, Snow White can at last begin to think. In all the time that she hides away from the world, she has read many books, books of lore and of fantastical creatures. She knows of the mating habits of griffins and the properties of unicorn horns. She knows when dragons prefer to hunt and why fairies sometimes eat their young.

She knows that those who are vampire-bit will soon become vampires themselves.

She begins to have difficulty falling asleep at night. She lies awake past midnight, and awakes with a start at dawn. The times of falling asleep and waking grow closer together until she does not sleep at all.

While she lies in her bed unsleeping, she probes her incisors with her tongue, feeling them grow sharper day by day, until one night a drop of blood wells on her tongue when she touches it to her tooth. She swallows the blood, feeling it slide, saltily and tasting of metal, down her throat, and finds that she likes the taste of it. It makes her feel alive as nothing has in a long time.

The sun that greets her in the mornings hurts her eyes and seems more like a curse, though the farmers call it a blessing. She keeps her curtains shut all day and deigns not to go outside. From her reading, she knows what would happen to her is she does, and though she does not value life, she is not eager to see what death would have in store for one such as she.

Surprisingly, she is not disgusted or afraid of what she has become. She likes the taste of the word on her tongue almost as much as she liked the taste of her own blood. Vampire. Vampire. At last she can put a name to who she is. Not Princess. Not Snow White. Not daughter whose mother left her. Vampire. She smiles, alone in the darkness of her room.

Her skin grows parchment pale and her lips plump, hungering for the blood their color mocks.

Food has no appeal for her anymore. She pushes away the sharp cheese and sweet pears she used to love. She tells the cooks to make her meat rare and tries to ignore the worried looks her father gives her as she tears into the pink and bloody steak.

But she cannot ignore the looks the stepmother sends her, looks not of worry but of fear, and a strange determination.

* * *

There is something wrong with that child, the queen thinks across the dining table, as she has times too numerous to count over the years. Something very wrong. And as time passes and the child grows yet stranger, refusing to come out of her room for days at a time, her lips growing red as though stained by blood, the once doctor comes to the realization that something must be done about her, and that she is the only one to do it.

Her determination strikes fever pitch on the evening ten years exactly from the day she became queen and received the gift of gifts, when the mirror, in response to her query practiced for years in the secret of her room when the king is not near, denies her her only lifeline.

"Who is the fairest of them all?" asks the queen.

And the mirror, instead of replying "You, my queen," as is its wont, says "You are most fair, my queen, but the other lady of your house is fairer still. Snow White is fairest of them all."

It cannot be. It cannot be. Snow White is barely fifteen, pale and withdrawn, with hair and lips too stark to offset her pallor nicely. The child is wrong, all wrong. The queen has known this for years, and now she takes away the only solace of a life of unreal dreams and unfulfilled expectations, of a husband who was near until the baby died, then went away forever, the baby dead, no hand to hold hers and no one to love and be loved by, save this cold piece of glass and gold which now betrays her. Everyone, everything betrays, falls short. There is but one solution, realizes the once-doctor queen, alone in her room, sprawled on the floor, her skirts all about her, her hair in disarray and face streaked with tears. If Snow White does not live, she cannot be fairest. Snow White must die, to bring the world back to where it belongs.

* * *

Snow White can make do at first on nearly raw meat that still holds some memory of blood flowing through its veins, but soon that, even with the occasional sampling of her own blood, does not satisfy.

She takes to once again sneaking out of her bedroom window and down the trellis when the world is dark and silent, this time not to escape but to hunt. She finds that she is fast, faster than the rabbits and badgers that inhabit the wood. As she sucks from the open wounds, blood that is not her own gushing down her chin and over her hands, at last, at last, her hunger is satisfied, but only for a time. Soon she begins to crave not the sweetly diluted blood of the innocent forest creature, but a drink more noxious, and all the more intoxicating.

She begins to assess the risk of taking this human or that, this stable boy or that ladies' maid. Who would miss them, who has family, friends, a sweetheart? Finally, she settles on the huntsman, he who brings in the meat for their table. She knows he lives alone and rarely talks to anyone. No one will look too closely into his death. But it is these same attributes, unbeknownst to Snow White, which make him so attractive to someone else.

* * *

The queen thinks of how to kill the girl. She thinks the forest the best place for it. The girl used to go there often enough in earlier days, before she took to shutting herself up in her room. No one will think it unnaturally odd that she became lost there, and died of starvation or exposure.

The queen knows she cannot kill the girl herself, much as she would like to, to satisfy this perverse desire she has to see the girl's heart, to discover at last whether she is truly human. She begins to look around, to find out who she will enlist to do her bidding. She sees the huntsman one day, drawing water from the well in the courtyard, a brace of rabbits hung on his belt. The blood streaked across his tunic belongs to him, and he to it. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the huntsman going into the forest and coming back smeared with blood.

She calls him to her private chambers, not the audience chamber, for she knows she looks far more imposing against the black velvet hangings that border her mirror. He looks frightened when she makes her proposition, and stutters "The-the princess?" But at her imperious nod, he straightens and salutes, though he is shaking visibly.

She hands him a silver box, intricately wrought with designs of leaves and flowers, which she has picked from the treasury. "Bring me back her heart in this box," she orders, and smiles at the shudder that wracks the huntsman's body.

After he has gone, she wonders when the change happened, when it was that she ceased feeling joy at anything but the pain of another.

* * *

Snow White waits for the huntsman in the courtyard at twilight, where she has seen him come before after a day's hunting. He comes out of the castle and goes straight to the well, raising a bucket of water and rinsing his face with it. Snow White watches him, half concealed in the rose walk. He is a large man, and his blood will flow thick. Her stomach twists in bitter delight at the thought.

She had thought of how to approach him. She thinks he is an honorable man, and it is better to play the innocent girl then the seductive young woman this time.

She taps him on the shoulder. "Good sir," she says in her most girlish voice, "I think I saw a young deer enter the woods not long ago, and it looked injured. Will you accompany me to go find it?"

For a moment, she watches the play of emotions on his face. Relief wages battle with horror, until he sighs, and takes her hand, as if she is but a child, and leads her into the forest.

She cannot remember the last time someone touched her. The stepmother never has, and her father not in years. The servants do not come near her, and she has no friends. She has forgotten the comfort to be received from the touch of another human. Well, she smiles wryly, from a human, anyway. She does not suppose that she can be considered human anymore.

They reach the clearing in the forest where everything changed forever, and Snow White takes her hand from the huntsman's gently. She did not know that she remembered how to be gentle. And this time, when she looks at him, she sees not the blood coursing through him, but the depth of sadness in his eyes, and she turns away, knowing that she cannot kill him. Not him. Not this man.

"Princess," he calls her, and she says "No," for that is not what she is, not anymore, not ever. She looks into his eyes, and sees something inside him break, and then he tells her of the stepmother, and how he must kill her and bring her heart back to the castle.

She knows she should be angry, should be furious, but she only feels tired, as she has not felt since the change occurred. She feels as though she could fall asleep.

"Maybe we can help each other," she says to the huntsman, placing her hand on his arm, and tells him to sit still. He may be a huntsman, but she is fast, and when a wild boar comes snuffling through the clearing a quarter hour later, she pounces, biting down on its neck with that swoop in her belly that she has come to equate with happiness, although she knows it is not.

The huntsman watches in amazement and not just a little fear as Snow White takes his knife from his belt and slits the boar open, but he does not move. She reaches into the gaping, steaming center and pulls out the heart, clutched in her fist, and hands it to the huntsman.  
"Give this to my stepmother, and it shall please her," Snow White says, and he never doubts her, this huntsman, but turns away, then looks at her one last time.

"I won't be back," she assures him, and turns also, to finish her meal.

* * *

The huntsman delivers the heart to the queen, and when he has left the room she removes it from its silver prison and holds it in her hands. She has missed the feel of organs beneath her fingers. She brings it closer, examining it. Something does not look right about this heart. But as it nears her face, she breathes in deeply, and the scent of fresh-spilled blood reaches her nostrils. Suddenly, an insatiable need comes over her. She has heard that when one eats the heart of a thing, one gains some of its power. She would like to gain control over the girl at last. She calls for salt for curing and prepares the heart herself, then sits in the dining hall where she has sat through so many fine banquets as queen, and there devours the heart of her stepdaughter. The blood is red on her napkin and the corners of her mouth and she feels sure that, at long last, balance has been restored.

_To be continued..._

A/N: This is a story I wrote a little more than I year ago. At first I thought I was so creative and that it was a really original idea, but then I realized that Neil Gaiman did vampire Snow White, and Tanith Lee did vampire Snow White, and they did it better. Mostly now when I look at this story I think, wow, that's a lot of page breaks. But I hope you liked it anyway. Please review and tell me what you think.


	2. Part Two

Part 2

Snow White knows that the stepmother is not a stupid woman. She knows that sooner or later the stepmother will realize she has been tricked. But even as she knows this, Snow White cannot summon the will to move from her spot in the clearing. The darkness grows around her until it is black as pitch, and it is only then that Snow White rises to her feet, aiming them away from the place she has lived all her life, a place that has never been home, and into the heart of the forest.

The house appears on the edges of her vision when the first pale streaks make their way across the sky and she bends her steps instead toward that. It is small and empty, and cobwebs lay thick upon the stairs. Stains from torchlight and tallow make sinister designs on the thatched ceiling and the rushes upon the floor are filthy and sparse. She would think the place abandoned if not for the seven dinner settings on the table, complete with food. She has heard of these men who are not men, who live alone and provide the diamonds that lay on her stepmother's throat and the emeralds that adorn her breast.

She thinks that they will be home soon, for it is nearing dark, and that, as with the huntsman, it is best to act the part of the lost innocent child that she is not, for though she is lost, innocence was never hers.

So she climbs the stairs, ducking her head at intervals, and finds seven beds ranged along the wall. She chooses the one farthest from the single window, which she is sure to cover before lying down, to begin the guise of sleep.

It is not long before she hears the rhythmic slam of booted feet on hard packed earth, and then the door opening and the rumble of gruff voices so different from those she has heard her whole life.

She feigns sleep as the noises climb the stairs to her, and she must fight a smile when all noises stop, and she knows they have seen her.

"A child," says one.

"A beautiful child," says another, his tone more awed than the last.

"How did she get here?" asks another, surely voicing the question they all feel.

She pretends to start awake, and then clutches the blanket to her chin as she looks round at them all. They are as she thought: the half-men, dwarf-men. She has nothing to fear from them, and yet she pretends.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she says, and weaves the pitiful tale of her stepmother's jealousy and attempt to kill her. She has had no reason to cry before now, and when she tries to summon tears, they will not come. Then she again remembers that she is a creature unfit for human tears.

They crowd around her anyway, this one touching her knee through the blankets, this one her elbow, as if to offer comfort, that which she is so far beyond now.

"You will stay with us," says the one who spoke first, and his voice is decisive and the others nod.

She nods at him as well. Now that it has been decided, what more use is continuing with her façade? And so she tells them the story of the boy in the forest, showing them the holes in her neck that are still there, that have never healed, and though at first they draw away in fear and consternation, they come back to her, as she knew they would, though they do not touch her anymore.

"We too are misunderstood by your kind-the kind you used to be," amends the one with the brown beard. And he almost pats her leg before drawing away. The rest follow. "We will let you sleep now,"

And thus begins Snow White's time with the dwarf-men. They do not understand that she does not need to sleep, but she lets them think she must, for she still must hunt if she wishes to survive. She could kill the dwarves, she knows, but the non-human men have no appeal for her, and she goes back to the unknowing forest creatures, the fawns and the rabbits, and bites her own wrist when things become too much.

She can hardly keep track of all of the little men, and so she does not try. There is the one who does most of the talking for them all, who is their leader, and she addresses him when she must, and smiles at the others when their brows draw too close together, and she knows they are thinking suspicious thoughts about her.

Every morning when they go off to work in the mines, he tells her not to go outside and not to let anyone in, and she thinks that these not men who have taken her in must be a bit stupid, for she has told him what she is, and she will not go outside during daylight, for she is still not eager to taste the feasts of hell.

* * *

The queen is always cold, and cannot summon back the warmth she felt as the still bleeding heart of her stepdaughter eased down her throat. She has avoided talking to the mirror in the two weeks since the deed was done, because although she wants, no, needs to hear it say she is the fairest of them all, she knows that waves of guilt will come crashing down upon her then, to beat at her brow and worry her temples. And then who will be fairest? Certainly not she.

But one day she cannot withhold any longer, and stands before the mirror in her bedroom and asks, "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

And the mirror, wanton traitor that it is, replies "Although you are most fair, my queen, the one with skin as snow and lips as blood, who dwells across the forest with the dwarf-men, is fairer still."

And the queen screams and bangs her fists upon the mirror, willing it to change its answer, but it cannot break, cannot change. The guilt does not come after all, only a greater anger, and a greater belief that the girl must die. She is unnatural; she must be. How else did she survive the huntsman and the perils of the forest?

The queen knows that she cannot tell another soul about this. The king has been more distant still since the disappearance of his only child, and lying beside her at night sighs, and looks toward the wall. No, everything she does must be done in secret, by herself. She finds the ancient books of medicine that she never used while she was still a physician, calling them foolish and out dated, but now she pores through them carefully, and finds that what she hoped for was true. Among these books of medicine are several books of spells, and soon enough, the queen finds the answer she seeks: poison.

And so in the afternoon, she walks to the orchard, carrying a basket, intent on finding the richest, reddest apple in the place. She climbs a tree in the middle of a row, first removing her shoes and stockings and bunching her dress up above her knees. She picks twelve apples before finding the most beautiful one of all. She turns it in her hands. It is strange, she thinks as she twists it in her hands flashing first white, now red as she turns it from side to side, and so mesmerized is she that she does not hear the approaching footsteps until they stop at the base of her ladder.

She gasps and almost drops the apple, the perfect tool of her revenge. The king smiles up at her, smiles at her in a way he has not for years.

She smiles back, and, placing the apple in her basket with the rest, making sure it stays red side up, climbs down the ladder carefully and joins her husband on the ground.

He takes the basket from her arm and places it gently on the ground. Then he says "Your feet are bare."

"I know," she replies, and then he sweeps her up in his embrace, kissing her forehead and then her mouth.

"I love you," he says, and she wonders what brought on this sudden show of affection from the king, but she does not ask, instead resting her head on his chest, gathering strength for what she is about to do.

She prepares the poison first. Thistle bark and rue, saffron and wolfsbane, and others she has never seen or even heard of before. She holds the apple in the kitchen tongs and dips the red side in, careful not to mar the perfect, translucent white half. How came this apple to be? She asks herself, but cannot answer, intent on her task.

When the apple has soaked up all the poison it can, she sets to work on the other potion she has devised. A disguise, for surely the girl will never speak to her as she is now. She takes on the appearance of an old woman, a crone, and wraps her now gray and wispy hair in a cloth before going before the mirror one last time, to tell it, "I will be the fairest of them all." She realizes the ridiculousness of this statement, looking as she does, but decides not to care.

* * *

Snow White lies on her back upon the floor of the dwarves' dining room, looking up at the cobwebby ceiling. Her dress will pick up the muck from the boots the dwarf-men refuse to take off, and the dust that has accumulated in this house over the years. They have asked her to clean it, but she does not know how, nor does she wish to learn. She wishes only to lie on her back and sleep, but that is one thing she cannot ever do.

A knock comes at the latched door. For days, Snow White has wished for just such an occurrence. The dwarves tell her she must not let anybody in, and yet Snow White's stomach twists with pleasure and her mouth waters at the thought of true blood at last, thick and true. This passing traveler may be the solution to her desire.

"Who is it?" she calls in the sweetest voice she can muster.

"Merely an old woman selling apples," comes the reply.

An old woman is not as good as a strapping huntsman in his prime, but she will do.

"Come in, Grandmother," says Snow White, and goes to unlatch the door.

There is something wrong with this old woman, Snow White knows, but what she cannot tell. And the apples she sells are so red, so luscious, as red as the blood that flows trickling from veins. She thinks that she could eat this apple, though she has not tasted human food for months, has been disgusted by it. The old woman holds up a strange apple, far more beautiful than the others, for the apple is Snow White, half as white as snow and half as red as blood.

And yet she hesitates, for though it looks like blood, she knows it will not taste of it.

The woman senses her hesitation, but misinterprets it. . "Here, dearie, I'll bite from the white half, and you from the red." And yes, it is appropriate, this way of doing things, for Snow White is now steeped in blood, and this old woman's blood will add to it soon enough.

And so she takes the bitten apple from the old woman's hand and raises it to her mouth and bites a chunk out of the red half. It is too heavy, too sweet, and she sucks in a mouthful of air, trying to rid herself of the taste. As she breathes, the apple catches in her throat, sticks there, and she cannot move it one way or the other. A little air seeps in around the edges of the apple, but not much, and were she human, she would surely suffocate. She feels the apple lodged in her throat, and yet, cursed as she is, she cannot die from it.

She falls upon the floor, because that is where she wants to be, after all, and she watches the old woman leave through mostly closed eyes.

The dwarves come home and find her there, and she thinks to try and tell them that she is not dead, but finds that she does not want to tell them anything. They fashion for her a glass coffin and lay her in it, arranging her carefully, not afraid to touch her now in death.

And so she lies in her coffin in the middle of the woods, not dying, no, but not truly living either. But then, she thinks, she was never truly living.

* * *

The queen thinks to be exuberant when she stands before her mirror and asks "Who is the fairest of them all?" and it answers her "While Snow White lies still as death, you, my queen, are fairest." She thinks to feel completed, but she does not. She feels just as empty as before, and tired, so tired. She takes to her bed, and though the king tries to comfort her, he shows none of the tenderness he did in the orchard, and his words do not heal, but wound deeper. And so she lies in her bed, fairest of them all, and waits for the judgment she knows will come.

* * *

Snow White lies still until the day she hears a voice unlike the gruff ones she has become accustomed to near her coffin. This voice is clear and sweet, and holds the promise of blood as rich as the apple was not. This voice belongs to arms that lift the edges of her coffin, there in the deepest clearing of the woods, where no light ever shines.

She feels warm breath upon her face, but cannot lift her eyelids to see, and then she feels strong arms under her shoulders, lifting her, and a sharp jolt as she is set down again, somewhere higher up. The jolt moves something inside of her, and suddenly she is able to choke up the apple that has kept her prisoner for these long days and weeks. She sits up upon the mule and sees the astonished face of a man with dark hair. He strides to her, takes her in his arms, lifting her off the mule, and kisses her. And yet this human contact, the first she has had in months, does not carry the comfort that the huntsman's grasp did, nor even the shallow care that her father's embraces uses to display. This man is hot and cold, passionate, but there is nothing there for her. After all, who is she?

She knows she does not deserve the love he ardently expresses to her, because there is no love, only hot passion and cold fear, and one will be exchanged for the other before long. And yet she smiles into his neck as he carries her away, careful not to let her teeth scrape his skin. She has always thought that she would like to be queen.

The End


End file.
